‘Your Place or Mine?’ Review: Dull and predictable

MANILA, Philippines – Your Place or Mine? is excruciatingly awful.

It starts with Haley (Andi Eigenmann) waking up naked without any memory as to how she got to where she’s at. Russell (Bret Jackson), also naked except for a towel over his privates, enters the scene. Haley, shocked by the situation, storms out of the apartment and heads home. 

An obligatory flashback ensues, showing what happened the night before. Haley was drinking after a recent heartbreak, with Russell rescuing her from one of the bar’s predatory denizens. He takes her home. They make love in a drunken stupor. The mystery of Haley’s temporary amnesia has been solved. 

Presumably, Haley and Russell fall in love, amidst awkward encounters inside cafes and on campus, backgrounded by the latest pop songs whose lyrics conveniently telegraph the emotions that the viewers are supposed to feel. This is the movie’s concept of romance – quick, convenient and soulless.

Wattpad fantasy

Of course, it is utterly silly to have high expectations over Your Place or Mine?, being yet another film adaptation of a Wattpad novella. The online platform has spawned numerous stories drafted by writers who hide behind pseudonyms. The stories, mostly teenybopper romances, are easily adapted to the screen.

Your Place or Mine?, by the author who hides behind the ridiculous name Turning Japanese, has all the bearings of a Wattpad story. Told from the perspective of a protagonist who suddenly finds herself the object of affection of various men, the story is written like a diary, presumably to allow a lot of paragraphs that are descriptive of emotions and other internal murmurings.

There’s a certain appeal to this kind of literature. Sure, the narrative is empty, but the medium’s popularity is very telling of a very young demographic that retreats to writing and reading to air out fantasies and aspirations that are otherwise out of place.

Your Place or Mine? in particular deals with the interaction between fated romance and arranged marriages. Its ideas are unsurprisingly juvenile, wrapped in a story that busies itself with undeveloped side characters, uninteresting love triangles, and plotlines that are more appropriate for an afternoon melodrama.

Wooden adaptation

The adaptation unfortunately removes everything that is remotely interesting from the Wattpad book, turning what essentially is an unabashed fantasy into a film that is bereft of any insight. Your Place or Mine? is nothing but a corporate showcase. It is a film that sees entertaining as a secondary intent, less important than the motivation of lining up actors, actresses, models, and songs for some sort of exposure.

The film has all the gloss of a talent agency’s catalogue. Talent, however, is quite scarce. The characters are played by up-and-coming actors and actresses who could have been replaced by mannequins; it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. A lot of the film’s scenes resemble bad karaoke videos, where models blankly stare into space to approximate the feelings demanded by the song.

There is absolutely no depth in Eigenmann’s portrayal of Haley, which is understandable considering there really isn’t anything much to explore with the character. More glaring however is Jackson, who shows how wooden acting can turn an already uninteresting character into something much worse. 

Waste of time

Your Place or Mine? isn’t the type of bad film that offers numerous pleasures. It is plainly worthless, a product of reprehensible laziness rather than enjoyable cluelessness. Its jokes are misplaced. Its drama is shallow. Its romance is both dull and hurried. 

Simply put, the movie is nothing more than an expensive way to waste one’s time. It is what it is, a pointless parade of pretty faces, palatial houses, and extravagant cars, all rolled up in a borrowed story that has been rendered sterile by brash capitalism and an absence of any form of imagination. – Rappler.com

Francis Joseph Cruz litigates for a living and writes about cinema for fun. The first Filipino movie he saw in the theaters was Carlo J. Caparas’ ‘Tirad Pass.’ Since then, he’s been on a mission to find better memories with Philippine cinema. Profile photo by Fatcat Studios